What once ensured that I sat at a table next to the teacher is now posted, Monday through Friday.

I've contributed to perhaps the best humor compilation I've ever read. Available now on Amazon!

My second chapbook, "The Second Book of Pearl: The Cats" is now available as either a paper chapbook or as a downloadable item. See below for the Pay Pal link or click on its cover just to the right of the newest blog post to download to your Kindle, iPad, or Nook. Just $3.99 for inspired tales of gin, gambling addiction and inter-feline betrayal.

My first chapbook, I Was Raised to be A Lert is in its third printing and is available both via the PayPal link below and on smashwords! Order one? Download one? It's all for you, baby!

Random dudes of all ages dressed, so help me, in shorts
and windbreakers?

Yup.

Anecdotal evidence would lead one to believe that bus
ridership goes up in the winter – or perhaps it’s just that we all appear to be
so much bigger, what with our overstuffed coats and our giant panda headgear;
and so I am relieved to have a window seat.

I am staring straight ahead when they get on at the Light
Rail stop.

There has been damage, somewhere along the line, to this
couple. Not born to it, perhaps, but
acquired during a car accident, maybe. I
imagine that the world appears to them as if it is underwater, or possibly as
if viewed through a mist. They move
slowly, looking for seats together.

There haven’t been two open seats next to each other for
at least five blocks.

The man across the aisle from me stands, calling “Back
door!” and exits. Through experience, I know
his stop is not for another two blocks, but I’ve seen this before. He’s making room.

The man who had been seated next to him stands, moves
toward the exit. “I need to stretch,” he
says to the couple.

They move to the seats.
“Affa you,” the man says. The
woman smiles. She sits, proclaims, “I’m
hungry!”

He laughs.

They both laugh.

And I smile and use a finger to draw a smiley face on the
fogged window next to me.

Pearlie! You're Back! I missed you too.Just received the notice of this post and had some problems getting the comment box to open. But it finally worked. And I went back and read the previous posts so had a feast. I agree with others who gave such good advice and also with them, offer supportive hugs and good wishes and more hugs.

I hope your mattresses have been picked up, or will be soon.Watson's Barbara

Ken Kesey, the Oregon author, "Sometimes a Great Notion", "Cuckoo's Nest" and the subject of Wolfe's "Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test", coined a phrase...."On the bus, or off the bus".....in reference to the bus he took cross country in '65. Clearly, you're on the bus.

Pearl did I mention that one of my nephews moved to your town, found himself a blond wife and everything. so this was to be his first winter--he opted off the bus to go study in Dubai. I think he forgets his midwestern snowbound puffy ass jacket roots.